


As Flies to Wanton Boys

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Rescue, Vessel Fic, nongraphic torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon-based AU.  Jimmy doesn't renew his consent at the end of "The Rapture," leaving Castiel trapped in Heaven at the mercy of the "Persuaders."  Dean has no choice but to find Jimmy and do some "persuasion" of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Flies to Wanton Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill a prompt by misachan on the dc-dystopia comment fic meme.

Dean wiped the blood off his knife and took another swig of whiskey. He’d been afraid that he’d enjoy this, that some set of tumblers would start rolling irretrievably through his brain, and unlock the thing that he’d become in Hell. Instead, he was painfully lucid, just as he’d been when he’d tortured Alastair. But at least Alastair had it coming.  
  
Jimmy Novak didn’t. Hell, Dean liked Jimmy. Jimmy had sacrificed everything–up to and including his own body–because he believed that it was the right thing to do. And now he was holding up under torture for the same reason. Jimmy wouldn’t abandon his wife and daughter again, certainly not for the sake of the angel who’d destroyed his life. Dean respected a man who protected his family. Dean was trying to protect his family, too.  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
When Dean and Sam exorcized Amelia, and then sent Jimmy into hiding with her and their daughter, Dean thought that it was a happy ending. Or at least as close to happy as the Winchesters ever saw. He was concerned that Castiel hadn’t returned from his literal come-to-Jesus meeting with his superiors, but he imagined that the wheels of bureaucracy turned even more slowly in Heaven than they did on Earth. He expected that Cas would reappear in his own time.  
  
For weeks, Dean thought that every stranger who held his gaze a moment too long, or whose head tilted inquisitively at something he said, was Cas in a new vessel. It led to more than one awkward moment, as Dean threw his arm around someone who looked at him like he’d lost his mind.  
  
And then there were the dreams. Dean was used to nightmares. All his life, he’d dreamed of Sam and his dad being ripped apart by monsters, in every baroque variation that his twisted brain could produce. It’d gotten worse after he’d come back from Hell. Night after night, the people he loved guest-starred under his razor.  
  
The dreams that came in the wake of Castiel’s disappearance were different, though. They weren’t memories, or half-suppressed fears. They glowed with a chilly hyper-reality. Every night, he saw the same scene. There was a plain, vast and barren, and a sound, like no sound he’d ever heard. It was a grating, metal-on-metal shriek that was nothing like a human voice, and yet was unmistakably a scream. Silhouetted against the empty sky were creatures as big as skyscrapers, with too many limbs, and wings that blotted out the sun.  
  
Always, one of the creatures reached for Dean with its strange limbs, as if to seize him. Dean ran from its grasp in terror. Liquid light poured from above as Dean fled, coating him in sticky phosphorescence. Dean could never quite remember what the creature looked like, afterward. It was a black hole that his mind could approach, but not enter.  
  
Dean would wake up exhausted, as if he really had been running all night. For the first time in his life, he had regular, splitting headaches. The pain was so bad that some mornings it sent him running to the bathroom to vomit. There were times that he was tempted to pound his head against the tiles, just to distract himself from the agony. Sam insisted that they were hangovers, but Sam wasn’t paying much attention to Dean, anymore.  
  
Dean would get better over the course of the day, but the dreams lingered, infecting his waking life. The diners and gas stations felt like set dressings, fake and inconsequential. He had the oppressive sense that the real reality was elsewhere, at right angles to his life, and that at any moment the curtain might be swept aside, leaving him back on that barren plain.  
  
One night, about a month after Castiel pulled his vanishing act, the creature in the dream caught Dean for the first time. It clutched him spasmodically, cutting off his breath in its desperation.  
  
 _Dean_ , it said, _why won’t you help me?_  Castiel’s voice rang crystal clear inside Dean’s head, achingly familiar, and sharp with fear as Dean had never heard it in real life.  _The Persuaders would have me prove my loyalty to Heaven, but I can’t return to Earth without a vessel. You must convince Jimmy Novak to renew his consent. Until I satisfy them they will–_ Cas’s voice cut off, and Dean was dropped. The other creatures closed in around the one that Dean now knew was Cas, and light rained down in sheets.  
  
Dean woke up gasping for air, without a doubt in his mind that he’d spoken to Castiel. He cursed himself for not understanding the dreams sooner. Of course Cas wouldn’t appear as the Cas Dean knew–he no longer had that body. Dean didn’t fully understand what the “Persuaders” were, but he got the general idea. He’d abandoned the friend that pulled him out of Hell.  
  
He told Sam that they needed to go to Jimmy’s hiding place and convince him to let Cas use his body. Sam agreed, less from any evident concern for Cas’s safety, and more from the listless passivity that had overtaken him in recent weeks. The only time that Sam looked engaged, anymore, was when he was hovering outside the door of the motel room, sending frantic text messages to Ruby. He’d blush and put his phone away when Dean walked by, like there was any mystery about what he was doing.  
  
Jimmy was halfway across the country, and Dean couldn’t bear to waste the days it would take to drive. Who knew how time moved in Heaven? If it was anything like Hell, a day could last months. They maxed out their credit cards, and sweated their way through airport security, hoping that no one made them as bank robbers who were supposed to be dead. Dean self-prescribed a fistful of Vicodin and white-knuckled his way through the three hour flight. Sam sat beside him, gazing mournfully at his cell phone because it didn’t have service.  
  
Jimmy was less than thrilled to see Dean, but invited him in, anyway. Dean laid the situation out for him, as best he could. He said that the bastards up in Heaven were hurting Cas, and he needed a vessel to prove his loyalty. He said that the ways in which Jimmy’s life had been royally fucked weren’t really Cas’s fault. He said that this would be temporary, and maybe they could make a deal for a specific time limit.  
  
Jimmy said no, and no, and no. Thanks, but no thanks. He wasn’t making any deals, and he didn’t really give a shit if Cas lived or died. He’d done his duty, and now he was done. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.  
  
Dean waited for Sam to get back to the motel, so that they could talk about what they were going to do next. Sam never arrived. It took Dean a few hours to look for Sam’s bag in the trunk of the rental car, and realize that it was gone. Dean called him dozens of times, but his phone stayed off. It was mostly  _pro forma_ , anyway. He knew that Sam was with Ruby, and he wasn’t really surprised. Dean had been alone for a long time. This just made it official.  
  
That night, Dean passed out over a whiskey bottle, and dreamed of the creatures again. When he saw the one that was Cas, he ran toward it with all his strength, ashamed that he’d spent so much time running away. It reached for him, as it had before, but in the instant before they touched, Dean was knocked backward with a force that made his vision white out in pain. He hit the ground hard, and lay there for a moment, dazed.  
  
He staggered to his feet when he heard a struggle. Cas was trying to hold the others back, away from Dean. It was mad for Dean to throw himself into that fray, like jumping between Godzilla and Mothra. But there were so many Persuaders, and Cas was screaming. Dean stepped forward. This time, it was Cas who hit him. Dean woke abruptly, as if he’d had a bucket of ice water dumped on his head.  
  
Dean went back to Jimmy’s home the next morning, hoping that the night had planted doubts. Maybe Cas could reach Jimmy’s dreams, too. No such luck. Dean couldn’t even talk his way past the front door.  
  
Dean returned to his empty motel room, out of plans. He drank. He brooded. As he ignored the daytime soaps and stared at the stains on the ceiling, he became aware of the terrible metal sound from his dreams, crying out in the back of his mind. At first, he thought that it was guilt and whiskey playing tricks on him, but as the hours passed, the sound grew louder, until it was undeniable.  
  
Damned souls scream with human voices, but Castiel’s suffering was an echo of Hell, just the same, and it reverberated through Dean, shaking loose pieces he’d spent the past year trying to hold in place. Dean paced, and cursed, and covered his ears with his hands. He blasted Metallica so loudly that the neighbors pounded on the walls, but he couldn’t drown out Cas’s cries. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt Cas’s consciousness fluttering frantically inside his chest like a frightened bird. Hour after hour, as the sun set and the room darkened, the fluttering grew weaker.  
  
At 2am, Dean drove back to Jimmy’s for the third time, and pounded on the door. When Jimmy answered, Dean clubbed him over the head with the butt of his gun. Dean regretted that he didn’t have the Impala with him, now. It’s hard to fit a grown man into the trunk of a Japanese car.  
  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Dean studied the canister of salt. Jimmy wasn’t a demon, but salt works on humans, too, if they have enough open wounds. “Just say yes,” Dean said. “Being a vessel can’t be worse than this.” He wondered if he was shouting. He had to raise his voice to hear himself over the screaming in his head.  
  
“You don’t get it,” Jimmy said. He didn’t look scared, or angry. Mostly he seemed tired, like the knives and pliers were just one more thing he had to endure. “I built my life around the Church. I believed that God loved every single man, woman, and child with a perfect and redemptive love. I gave my body to an angel out of that faith. And you know what I learned? It’s bullshit. These things that call themselves angels, they’re monsters with better press. They don’t care about us. We’re just the horses they ride and the sheep they shear. What did they tell you to make you do this? That you’re special? Chosen? They said the same things to me, Dean, and look where I am now. Their God is a false God. I won’t serve Him anymore.”  
  
But he did, in the end. Everyone breaks under the right sort of pressure.  
  
The screaming in Dean’s head cut off abruptly when Jimmy said yes, like a connection had gone dead. The light began to build, and Dean looked away. He turned back warily when the warehouse went dark again. Nothing about the body had changed–it was still tied to a chair, bloody and ruined–but the eyes staring back at him from the swollen face were familiar.  
  
“Cas?” Dean asked in a small voice. The angel was staring at him like he was some particularly distasteful species of insect. Dean was suddenly, acutely aware of the knife in his hand. He set it down.  
  
“I tried to be discrete when I contacted you,” Castiel said. “Once you drew the attention of the Persuaders, they began to work on you, as well.” He looked down at the blood on his shirt. “I see they were effective.”  
  
Dean didn’t know what to say to that. He felt sick and confused. He wasn’t the one who’d tortured Cas, but he was a torturer, and Cas had been tortured. This didn’t feel anything like a rescue.  
  
“Here, let me . . .”. He went to untie the ropes that bound Castiel, only to find him standing two inches away. All signs of injury were gone. It could have been any meeting between the two of them, on any day, if there hadn’t been a tray of bloody implements on the table next to them.  
  
“What . . .” The words stuck in Dean’s throat. He swallowed and started over. “What was it you needed to tell me, before?”  
  
Castiel shook his head. “I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven, I don’t serve Man. And I certainly don’t serve you.”  
  
There was a flutter of wings, and Dean was alone.


End file.
